Anna Zorina Gallery is pleased to inaugurate its new Los Angeles Gallery space with the solo exhibition of Alina Bliumis, Borders and Bruises. This is Bliumis’ first show with the Gallery. The exhibition will feature three bodies of work including the watercolor maps of Nations Unleashed, the abstract paintings series Bruises and text-based sculptural works Concrete Poems. A percentage of proceeds from the exhibition will be donated to Direct Help For Ukraine and BYSOL, an organization supporting politically repressed Belarusians.
Bears, eagles and octopi have been active role-players in satirical maps since the 16th century. With her watercolor series,Nations Unleashed, Bliumis pays homage to cartographic curiosities by employing animal symbolism to convey biting political critique. In Bear vs. Nightingale, European countries become a battleground of zoomorphic shapes. Here the national animals are seen in mid-clash as the Ukrainian nightingale faces the Russian bear, an eagle representing the West stands alert. Bliumis explores this history of transferring human actions and motives onto primal beings to remove individual responsibility and agency from the political theater. This shift in perspective heightens awareness to this rampant strategy of displacement, compelling us to critically reflect on the Mine line that separates fact from fiction in global geopolitics.
Before maps are drawn, history is first recorded on bodies through experience captured in the form of bruises, wounds, calluses. The body is a document of social struggles. For example, in the artist’s native country of Belarus, the nation united in response to the rigged election of 2020. These protestors shared the resulting scars of having faced aggressive measures of suppression and brutal detainment across various media platforms, bringing public awareness to the human rights abuse in hopes of achieving justice in the future. These events have triggered Bliumis’ watercolor on linen series, Bruises. Each bruise painting is numbered in reference to statistics of human suffering. The traumas range from serious to playful, from political prisoners and refugees to unrequited celebrity crushes. The artist represents the bruises as abstract patches of watercolor allowing the pigment to bleed into the weave of the linen in a style reminiscent of Color Field painting. Bliumis engages the expressionist style’s association with making an emotional impact through clarity of color and form with an emphasis on celebrating individual expression and freedom of subjectivity. Her paintings are spatial and alive to endow an immortality to the feelings and sensations that underlie these important moments throughout our own personal and collective history.
If the border is what you fight for and body what you fight with, then poetry in life is a tool for survival. The works within the Concrete Poemsseries depict a literal approach to a visual poetry tradition that takes on a specific typographic arrangement to convey meaning. Inspired by street wall scribbles, grafiti, and absurdist poetry, the artist makes her mark firmly in concrete. Breaking down words into a context that brings new meaning or finds irony in everyday language, Imagination Nation; Mother Other; Father Her; Slaughter Laughter. Bliumis exploration of her second language of English finds that even one letter can make all the difference.
The exhibition is accompanied by text written by art critic, media theorist, and philosopher, Boris Groys.
“First, there is the old truth that ‘In the beginning is the body,’ with its desires, its powers, its manifold form of resistance to exploitation. As is often recognized, there is no social change, no cultural or political innovation that is not expressed through the body, no economic practice that is not applied to it.’”
— Silvia Federici “Beyond the Periphery of the Skin” 2020.
Entering the gallery, a visitor met by a floor to ceiling colorscape, hanging under its own weight, a linen from the artist series “Bruise.” Alina started the series last year, responding to the violence and battered bodies on the news coming from her birthplace Belarus. On August 8, 2020 the nation came together in unprecedented unity to protest against the rigged presidential election of the man who has held power over the last 26 years, Alexander Lukashenko. Thousands of peaceful protesters looking for justice poured to the streets where they were met by authorities conducting indiscriminate beatings and brutal mass detentions, and dispersing crowds with truncheons, stun grenades, and water cannons. Over the following weeks, protesters made their battered bodies public to record the evidence of a human rights crisis in the country. Lukashenko claimed that the opposition fabricated the abuse and “girls painted their butts with blue color.”
“Bruise #16” (2021) watercolor on printed linen was created for this exhibition. Beneath it lies the text-based and site-specific work “Concrete Poems” covering the floors of the gallery. Alina brings together art historical references such as Dada and Brazilian “Concrete Art” and the literal interpretation of concrete poetry inspired by city scribbles, graffiti, and absurdism.
One of the poems reads Imagination, Imagination, Nation.
Installation view: Alina Bliumis Bruise #15, 2021, watercolor on printed linen, 145 x 112 inches / 370 cm x 284 cm
Exhibition and public program as a gesture of solidarity with Belarusian voices of (artistic) resistance protesting against a derailed dictatorship.
Witness the historic moment of a new Belarusian society unfolding – tirelessly protesting the escalating pressures of a derailed dictatorship. To avoid persecution a clever use of language, imagery, and fill-in-the-blanks inventiveness has emerged, leading to a double art of transparency and subtlety. ‘Screams of the Silenced’ is a gesture of solidarity with Belarusian artists and all other voices of resistance in Belarus.
Be immersed in a critical polyphony while exploring deeply personal first-hand accounts, exemplified by video works, prison drawings, installations, paintings, kinetic sound sculptures, interactive performance art, as well as an extensive public program. Over 30 artists are participating in the exhibition: Tasha Arlova, Eyad Aljarod, Bazinato, Rufina Bazlova, Alina Bliumis, Alena Davidovich, Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, Andrei Dureika, Darya Golova, Mikhail Gulin, HeHe, Maria Komarova, Zahar Kudin, Lera Lazuk, Vika Mitrichenko, Ulyana Nevzorova, Lesia Pcholka and Uladzimir Hramovich, Ales Pushkin, Ala Savashevich, Nadya Sayapina, Artemy Sei, Jura Shust, Maksim Shved, Antonina Slobodchikova, Raman Tratsiuk, Maxim Tyminko, Ira Zabela, cultprotest.me, Polina Titova.
